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GET INSPIRED!!!

Last Wednesday, I had the pleasure of attending my first Tech-Sig meeting in Austin. Seeing as I had never attended one before, I didn't know what to expect. I definitely got inspired...got some ideas...and got to network a little. One of my favorite presenters was Carl Hooker, Director of Instructional Technology for Eanes ISD in Austin. Talk - about - DYNAMIC! He is a visionary, a leader, and also a bit of a stand-up comedian. :) Here's a video he showed us to introduce his concept of "iCeption." Eanes ISD rolled out 2000 iPads to their high school kids this year...ALL IN ONE DAY! Yeah. Impressive.

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Last week a BHS student brought me his chromebook and he was VERY frustrated that he had been hacked and/or thought he had a "virus." On his screen, I saw something similar to this...

The student did a Google Images search for "food" for his culinary arts class. However, suddenly all of the pictures in the search results were replaced with pictures of Nicholas Cage.
I have to confess ... I cracked up laughing. I LOVE HIGH SCHOOL KIDS! (Disclaimer: No, I do not condone hacking! I just thought this was clever!) Turns out, the student had left his chromebook unattended and a fellow classmate played a little trick on him. After a quick Google search, I found an article about this Google Chrome extension...

I showed the student how to find his extensions and delete the extension in question. :) I also informed our Tech Dept. Another confession, I immediately started thinking "Who can I do this to?!" If I am thinking that, then we probably have stude…

At Google Teacher Academy, one of the coolest things I was introduced to is Google Scripts. I had heard of scripts, but had never tried to use any. {I'm a scripting noob!} Luckily, during our second day unconference, I was able to try out Autocrat while @davidgtess held my hand. :)

If you're not familiar with Autocrat, it's a document merge script. Pretty much, what that means is that you can have the data from any spreadsheet populated into a Doc template and saved to Drive or emailed out. What this means for me is that I can have someone fill out a Google form and have their input sent to a beautifully formatted, print-friendly document. So many uses!

If you would like to try this out for yourself, YOU CAN! You can fill out the form below to have a sample holiday mad lib automatically emailed to you! :)

First, fill out this form: http://goo.gl/DnTN7fWhen you click submit, you will receive an email with your PDF mad lib. :)
What does it look like behind the scene…

If you missed this gem shared by Stephen Anderson and Gwyneth Jones last week on Twitter, you're definitely going to want to check it out now! Are your kids tired of the same old book report format? Let them try a Twitter Book Review! Not only does this method teach students to be concise, but it also uses a current, up-to-date style of writing that our kids are familiar and comfortable with. Students can use this character counter to make sure their book review is under 140 characters. Anderson's idea: have students submit their Book Review Tweet in a Google Form. Genius!

I did this activity with my teachers (to try and encourage them to do it with their kids!) and it turned out awesome! I used a Google form to collect the responses and then mail merged them into a Word doc to create the "tweet bubbles" for a bulletin board. The staff and students have loved looking to see what the teachers at our school are reading! And our collection is still growing!